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喬布斯在斯坦福大學的演講稿英文，喬布斯在斯坦福大學的演講視頻( 四 )

生活百科斯坦福大學


故事從我出生的時候講起 。我的親生母親是一個年輕的,沒有結婚的大學畢業生 。她決定讓別人收養我, 她十分想讓我被大學畢業生收養 。所以在我出生的時候，她已經做好了一切的準備工作，能使得我被一個律師和他的妻子所收養 。但是她沒有料到,當我出生之后,律師夫婦突然決定他們想要一個女孩 。所以我的生養父母突然在半夜接到了一個電話:“我們現在這兒有一個不小心生出來的男嬰,你們想要他嗎？”他們道:“當然！”但是我親生母親隨后發現，我的養母從來沒有上過大學,我的父親甚至從沒有讀過高中 。她拒絕簽這個收養合同 。只是在幾個月以后,我的父母答應她一定要讓我上大學,那個時候她才同意 。
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
在十七歲那年,我真的上了大學 。但是我很愚蠢的選擇了一個幾乎和你們斯坦福大學一樣貴的學校, 我父母還處于藍領階層，他們幾乎把所有積蓄都花在了我的學費上面 。在六個月后, 我已經看不到其中的價值所在 。我不知道我想要在生命中做什么,我也不知道大學能幫助我找到怎樣的答案 。但是在這里，我幾乎花光了我父母這一輩子的所有積蓄 。所以我決定要退學,我覺得這是個正確的決定 。不能否認,我當時確實非常的害怕, 但是現在回頭看看,那的確是我這一生中最棒的一個決定 。在我做出退學決定的那一刻, 我終于可以不必去讀那些令我提不起絲毫興趣的課程了 。然后我還可以去修那些看起來有點意思的課程 。
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
但是這并不是那么羅曼蒂克 。我失去了我的宿舍,所以我只能在朋友房間的地板上面睡覺,我去撿5美分的可樂瓶子，僅僅為了填飽肚子, 在星期天的晚上,我需要走七英里的路程，穿過這個城市到Hare Krishna寺廟,只是為了能吃上飯——這個星期唯一一頓好一點的飯 。但是我喜歡這樣 。我跟著我的直覺和好奇心走, 遇到的很多東西,此后被證明是無價之寶 。讓我給你們舉一個例子吧：
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
Reed大學在那時提供也許是全美最好的美術字課程 。在這個大學里面的每個海報, 每個抽屜的標簽上面全都是漂亮的美術字 。因為我退學了, 沒有受到正規的訓練, 所以我決定去參加這個課程，去學學怎樣寫出漂亮的美術字 。我學到了san serif 和serif字體, 我學會了怎么樣在不同的字母組合之中改變空格的長度, 還有怎么樣才能作出最棒的印刷式樣 。那是一種科學永遠不能捕捉到的、美麗的、真實的藝術精妙, 我發現那實在是太美妙了 。
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

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